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		<title>A day of laundry &lt;https://y.st./en/weblog/2016/07-July/05.xhtml&gt;</title>
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			<h1>A day of laundry</h1>
			<p>Day 00486: <time>Tuesday, 2016 July 05</time></p>
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<p>
	Our mother and Vanessa went shopping for interview clothing of our mother and get our mother a manicure; our mother&apos;s going to their interview tomorrow.
	I was surprised to hear that my mother was getting a manicure, as they never do that.
	After all, they&apos;re far too expensive.
	When they got back though, it turned out that they decided not to get one because they cost so much; they&apos;d forgotten that they really aren&apos;t affordable.
	Meanwhile, Cyrus and I stayed home to do laundry.
	Vivian took off to the lab that they work in at the school.
	My plan was to work on catching up on my journal entries, as I haven&apos;t had the time to actually write them for a while; I&apos;ve just written quick notes to myself to use to construct my entries with later.
	However, I can&apos;t actually get very far because I&apos;m missing a vital piece of software: <a href="apt:keepassx">KeePassX</a>.
	When I downgraded my system, I didn&apos;t actually get a chance to use it much, so I didn&apos;t find what software I still needed to reinstall, which I normally would have come across during normal use of the machine.
	Vivian has no Internet service at home, so until I can find an Internet connection to borrow, I&apos;m just going to have to wait to write.
	Without KeePassX, I can&apos;t unlock my encrypted password database to retrieve my <abbr title="Pretty Good Privacy">PGP</abbr> key&apos;s password, so I can&apos;t sign my entries.
	Not being able to sign my entries means that I can&apos;t make the appropriate <a href="apt:git">Git</a> commits, so I can&apos;t move on to the next entry.
</p>
<p>
	Cyrus kept using the word &quot;they&quot; to mean &quot;it&quot;, which was a bit strange.
	I wasn&apos;t overly bothered by it, but I found it strange.
	When I asked about it, Cyrus blamed me, saying that because <a href ="https://en.wikipedia.org./wiki/Singular_they">I was using &quot;them&quot; to be a genderless &quot;he&quot;/&quot;she&quot;</a>, Cyrus had begun following suit.
	I explained that using &quot;they&quot; was not the same thing, and that while I didn&apos;t care if they did it, they couldn&apos;t blame me for the behavior; Cyrus was the only one doing that, I wasn&apos;t.
	At first, Cyrus copped an attitude, blowing me off and mostly remaining silent.
	After a while though, they said that they&apos;d stop replacing the word &quot;it&quot; with the word &quot;they&quot;, as Cyrus did feel that this was the wrong word, but would also start &quot;correcting&quot; <strong>*my*</strong> use of the word, despite my use being technically correct in modern English.
	I made it very clear that doing such would be interpreted as an attack on me, and that if they did that, they couldn&apos;t expect us to continue a happy and peaceful relationship.
	After a while though, Cyrus came out with the real problem.
	Cyrus believes that the genderless form of those sexist pronouns is &quot;it&quot; while they thought that I was somehow thinking that the genderless form of those words is &quot;they&quot;.
	As such, they&apos;d incorporated this extra word into the grouping and were incorrectly blaming me for it.
	Finally, we could get this mess cleared up.
	I explained that I (and any sane person) agree that &quot;it&quot; would be the appropriate word to use.
	However, I continued, people get offended when you refer to them as &quot;it&quot; but not if you refer to them as &quot;they&quot;.
	I don&apos;t use the word &quot;they&quot; over the word &quot;it&quot; because it&apos;s the better option in terms of correctness, but because I don&apos;t want to needlessly tick people off.
</p>
<p>
	Vivian told me a bit more about the [the Organisation] and why they do things the way that they do.
	It turns out that why they use a massive collection of index cards to record data instead of a computer with a real database is that labor movements such as this one are constantly getting hacked.
	In order to &quot;hack&quot; their card catalog, someone would need to physically break into the building.
	It&apos;s harder to do from across the country and it&apos;s easier to catch people at; not to mention the fact that it simply doesn&apos;t happen as often.
	Furthermore, the reason that the [the Organisation] use telephones instead of email (they refuse to use email in most cases, by the way) is specifically because telephones are archaic and horrid.
	They&apos;re terribly inconvenient, but it&apos;s harder to bug the call than hack an email because bugging the call has to be done in real time.
	After the call&apos;s over, you can still get information on who called who and for how long, but it&apos;s not so easy to find out what was actually said.
	You also can&apos;t trace a <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr> request used for the call, as the telephone system still hasn&apos;t caught up with basic <abbr title="Domain Name System">DNS</abbr>.
	All you have to go on is that one arbitrary number was used to call another arbitrary number, so you&apos;d need to use some sort of lookup table to see who these numbers represent.
	It&apos;s an easy task for the <abbr title="National Security Agency">NSA</abbr>, and fairly easy if you&apos;re a company with access to a lookup table, but it&apos;s one more hoop to jump through.
	Email on the other hand sits on the server, often for years, depending on the email user.
	If the email server is hacked at any time while the email is still there, the full message can be retrieved.
	I have a bit more respect for them now.
	Anyone that insists on using only telephones and won&apos;t allow email as a substitute has very backwards thoughts in my book, but in this case, they actually have an arguably-legitimate reason for it.
</p>
<p>
	Vivian, Cyrus, Vanessa, and I want on a walk while our mother napped.
	We left a note saying that we were out walking, but when we got back, our mother was frustrated that we didn&apos;t say in our note where exactly we were walking <strong>*to*</strong>.
	While our mother always likes to have a destination in mind before going on a walk, they know very well that the rest of us don&apos;t.
	Not even <strong>*we*</strong> knew where we were going.
	If we did have a destination in mind, it would have been an errand, not a walk.
	While we were out, we spotted a person with no hands.
	They had full arms, but the ends were just nubs.
	I really felt bad for them; it must be difficult to go through life without hands.
</p>
<section id="docmod">
	<h2>Document modifications</h2>
	<p>
		On <a href="/en/weblog/2018/01-January/16.xhtml#Vivian">2018-01-16</a>, my sister, Vivian, requested that I replace all instances of her legal name in my journal with the name &quot;Vivian&quot;.
		She also asked that the name of the organisation she works for be redacted.
		This page was modified to fulfil that request.
	</p>
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